


late nights and lairs

by jaadester



Series: Felannie Arrow AU [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arrow AU, F/M, Gunshot Wounds, Pre-Relationship, i didn't think this was gonna be slow burn but shit it might be, no beta we die like Glenn, no knowledge of arrow needed, well singular gunshot wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-04-24 08:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22181809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaadester/pseuds/jaadester
Summary: A groan sounds from behind Ingrid. Annette nearly jumps out of her skin.To her credit, Ingrid merely sighs and stands, turning to face the rousing man lying on the table, “I thought I explicitly told you not to get shot. It’s like you purposefully do the exact opposite.”Annette stands up, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders and holding it there as she wanders over to stand beside her. Felix’s eyes droop half-open, but the sour expression is clear, “Didn’t think the old man had it in him. I’m almost impressed.”Ingrid makes a choking noise, “Felix, no.”-aka Annette meets Felix's other half
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Series: Felannie Arrow AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591543
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	late nights and lairs

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know what i'm doing with this but here we go

Annette wonders if Felix will endorse “Personal Researcher for Felix Fraldarius” on her resume.

Not that she needs her resume anytime soon. While the work is boring, she enjoys her coworkers at Aegis. And the loose interpretation of “business casual” when it comes to dress code. 

A red pen balances precariously behind her ear as she continues on her next venture for one Felix Fraldarius. He didn’t seem the type to be offended if she ever turned him away—she did have an actual job, after all—but she’s determined to solve him. There’s something off about him, and mysteries bother her. 

And, well, he’d brought her a  _ dagger _ this time. He’d claimed that he was trying to buy a gift for a picky weapons collector friend, and she almost would’ve believed him if she didn’t remember the whole bullet-ridden-laptop-that-definitely-wasn’t-his fiasco. 

The blade is pitch black and shines eerily, so pristine that she could use it to do her makeup in its reflection if she wanted to. It’s not treated steel, or iron, or any of the other traditional blacksmithing options, that’s for certain. She’d even called up an art-loving friend from the Leicester region. He’d had nothing for her besides his own mild curiosity.

No metal seems to fit the bill, and unless she finds where that’s manufactured, it’s a lost cause. She can’t  _ stand  _ that idea. Annette’s determined to keep digging until she finds something. If she doesn’t, she’ll just wait for Felix to show up again and interrogate him about wherever he’d gotten this dagger. 

The lights on her floor have been long turned off. She knows that she’s probably the only person left in this building at this hour, and she should probably get going soon. Travelling through the Tailteans past sunset is never a good idea. Especially alone, and especially as a woman. 

She pulls the pen from its perch and shoves it into the cup on her desk. The clock in the corner of her desktop reads well past ten o’clock at night as she saves her research and shuts it down. The whirring of the computer dies down, replaced by the squeaking of the wheels on her chair. 

The heels get put back on again as she stands and straightens her orange pencil skirt. She tugs back on her blue blazer and slings her laptop bag over one shoulder and her purse over the other.

Some random showtune pops into her head as she shuts off her lights and triples checks that all her drawers are locked. What should she get for dinner? It wasn’t practical to eat a pint of peach sorbet, but she wanted to anyway. She wouldn’t. At least not  _ only _ the sorbet.

Annette blinks and she’s approaching her car in the underground parking garage, having absorbed herself into her own spiraling thoughts as she had stood in the elevator. She unsurprised to see that her car is one of the two or three left in the expansive parking garage, besides the third shift janitors and an executive or two. The sign in front of her parking spot blares her name and department:  _ Annette Dominic, IT _ .

Petey chirps at her as she slides into the driver’s side, dumping her bags in the passenger seat and shoving her key in the ignition. Ugh, what she wouldn’t do for—

Someone groans from her backseat.

She barely suppresses the scream as she reaches for the pepper spray in her bag, wishing that she’d decided to take Felix’s dagger home with her. Oh Goddess, she was going to die, wasn’t she? This would be it.

“Annette, look at me.”

Her head whips to look and—it’s the vigilante. In her backseat. 

“How do you know my name?” She demands, taking her eyes off of him—definitely a him—for a split second to continue searching for the pepper spray buried deep in her purse.

“It’s me.”

She looks again at the vigilante and everything makes sense. Or, well, nothing makes sense, but it does become a bit more clear.

Felix Fraldarius stares back at her. 

Her lips part in shock and blue eyes widen in disbelief for only a moment—until she notices the damp fabric over his collarbone. That’s definitely blood, which means he’s definitely injured where he definitely shouldn’t be. 

“Hospital,” she announces, putting Petey in reverse and beginning to recklessly out. 

Annette catches him shaking his head in her rearview, “No. The company’s old facility in the Tailteans, on Kyphon Street. Nowhere else, Annette. I’m serious.”

His eyes droop with the effort of staying awake in the reflection of her rearview, lashes continually fluttering open and closed. She swallows, “Okay. Kyphon Street.”

The only answer she gets is silence, along with the sound of her Bluetooth finally connecting to her stereo. 

_ Stay alive… _

_ Stay alive… _

She nearly veers Petey off the road to slam her hand over the volume button, shutting off the music. A car in opposing traffic honks their horn, but she only accelerates and keeps driving.

The wheels squeal to a stop at the abandoned building, eyes desperately searching for what could possibly be there that was better than a hospital.

The high tech keypad. Bingo.

She stumbles barefoot out of her car and throws open the rear door, placing shaking fingers over Felix’s pulse point. It’s there—but barely. Her hand comes away wet.

Annette wills her hands to stop shaking as she grabs the screwdriver she always keeps in her laptop bag. The old pavement of the alleyway digs into soles of her feet as she detaches the plate of the keypad. 

Wires. She can work with wires.

It only takes her a moment before the little light beeps green and the locking mechanism clicks. Dear Goddess, she hopes there’s something—or someone—in this building.

She throws the door open and sprints down the stairs, throwing her clean hand over her eyes as they adjust to the industrial LEDs. There’s the telltale click of a gun safety. 

It’s Ingrid, who slowly lowers the weapon. The news plays on the computer screen at the desk she’d just been sitting at.

“Please help.”

The blonde ditches her suit jacket on the ground and sprints past Annette and up the stairs. She follows, shutting the car door behind her after Ingrid hefts him in her arms and practically yanking her key from the ignition.

Ingrid’s cutting Felix’s t-shirt off of him when she descends again, having splayed him out on the metal table in the center of the set up. His vigilante coat is haphazardly thrown on the desk chair. Annette fumbles off her blazer, refusing to look at the deep red stains along the wrists as she tosses it to the floor. 

She lets herself be pulled over by Ingrid, who replaces her hands with Annette’s over a white washcloth, “Put pressure here.”

Time blurs from there—his heartbeat stops, and the defibrillator short circuits. She messes with the wiring and they have him back. Ingrid pulls needle and thread through the bullet wound right below his collarbone. His heartbeat is steady and there’s nothing else they can do, at least that’s what Ingrid says, and she certainly knows more about this than Annette does. 

The clink of Ingrid tossing the needle into the metal bowl barely registers in her mind, “Thank you for holding it together,” Ingrid says softly. “I know it’s not… simple.”

She opens her mouth to speak and starts to move her hands—only they’re stained deep red, settling into the crevices of her skin and staining the white polish she’d just painted her nails. She can only imagine the state of her white blouse. Annette swallows, “Is… is there a sink? And maybe a change of clothes I can borrow?”

Ingrid nods and points, “You can shower through there. I’ll scrounge up some clothes for you, unfortunately it’s laundry time.” She tries to smile, but it comes out more as a grimace.

Annette barely feels herself nod as she turns around and heads to the door. She nearly pushes it open—and then remembers what’s on her hands. Instead, she uses her shoulder and flips on the switch with the back of her hand. She doesn’t look in the mirror. She doesn’t want to know.

The water does wash clear, but in the corner of her eye, she still sees the pink streams.

-

She’d needed to roll up the jeans three times, and she’s drowning in the black t-shirt, but it’s better then what she was in before.

Annette refuses to look at the archaic computer system on the desk, instead swiveling the chair away. Time ticks by, marked only by the heartbeat providing a steady rhythm to fill the silence of the basement. If it weren’t for the monitor and the white gauze looped around his shoulder, he’d almost look as though he were just sleeping. It’d be smart to leave, now in the early morning hours, but something keeps her glued right there, staring at the reassuring, steady way his chest rises and falls.

She can’t reconcile the pleasant, albeit a bit awkward, man who often wanders into her cubicle with the vigilante running around Fhirdiad. It just doesn’t seem possible. It’s not as if there was anything about Felix that screamed  _ I run around rooftops at night and threaten people with archaic weapons _ . Sure, she’d thought that his little research projects were strange, but that jump to concluding him as the vigilante hadn’t crossed her mind.

Now that she can see, though, it’s hard to miss the little nicks and scars littering his torso. From a blade, she would presume. There’s a tattoo along the right side of his ribcage too—curves that link up into a butterfly-esque design, with three loops towards the bottom and the lines extending upwards. It can’t be larger than the size of a sticky note.

In the turmoil of her thoughts, Annette misses the sound of Ingrid’s footsteps as she approaches, holding out a blanket for her. She smiles and accepts, murmuring her appreciation as she pulls in her legs and drapes the blanket over herself. It’s a bit scratchy, and does minimal against the cool air, but it’s comforting nonetheless.

“You’re oddly accepting of this,” Ingrid remarks, pulling up a stool and putting herself in Annette’s eyeline. She blocks Felix’s resting form from view, “Not that it’s a bad thing, just strange.”

Annette’s eyes drift to the rack of swords in the corner, then to the box of unfinished arrowheads on the desk beside her, “He hasn’t truly hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it yet. And neither the news nor the police can link together a motive.” 

A sigh, “Believe it or not, he doesn’t really care much for the actual vigilante part. It’s simply his means to an end.”

Annette chews on her next words, unknowing whether the woman across from her will shut her down or answer her, “What is that end?”

Ingrid stills and glances at him, something achingly fond in her eyes. Her shoulders slump and her expression drops as she sighs, “I shouldn’t be the one telling you that. If he trusts you enough to get him here, he’ll tell you himself.”

She worries her lip, “I think he was just short on options at the time.”

“I’ve only been doing this with him for a couple months, but Felix always has a contingency plan, and usually at least another one after that,” Ingrid says, “I can guarantee that he thought long and hard about this.”

A groan sounds from behind Ingrid. Annette nearly jumps out of her skin.

To her credit, Ingrid merely sighs and stands, turning to face the rousing man lying on the table, “I thought I explicitly told you  _ not _ to get shot. It’s like you purposefully do the exact opposite.”

Annette stands up, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders and holding it there as she wanders over to stand beside her. Felix’s eyes droop half-open, but the sour expression is clear, “Didn’t think the old man had it in him. I’m almost impressed.”

Ingrid makes a choking noise, “Felix,  _ no.” _

But he’s already turned his attention to Annette, who’s still reeling from the fact that apparently  _ Rodrigue Fraldarius  _ had shot his own son, albeit in a disguise that practically invited violence. 

His expression softens and he pushes himself up off the table on his good arm, shaking his head at Ingrid as she moves—whether to help him or make him lie back down is unknown. Felix waves her off and leans forward towards Annette, “Sorry about that. Thank you, Annette.”

There’s a sincerity to him that she hasn’t seen before etched into the lines of his face, “It’s all good, no big deal.”

It’s most definitely a big deal, but he indulges her with a tiny uptick of his lips as he reaches over and pulls the edges of the blanket more tightly around her. He sets his hand atop of hers, the one peeking out from the blanket to clutch it around her, as he speaks, “You should get home. I’m sure it’s late.”

He’s right, but that doesn’t mean she needs to be told what to do. She acquises this time and nods. The tension in his shoulders leaks away as he turns towards Ingrid, “Would you make sure she gets home alright?”

The two of them have an entire conversation in a fraction of a second, told only through eye contact and Ingrid’s singular quirked brow. 

“It’s alright, I’m a big girl. And I know how to use pepper spray,” Annette smiles. Felix lifts his hand off hers as she pulls the blanket from her shoulders, setting it down on the table beside him. 

“Come back tomorrow and we can talk,” Felix tells her, reaching up and setting his hand on her bicep. 

She merely nods before stepping away, “See you both tomorrow.” Her smile is tight as Ingrid gives a little wave. The sound of her footsteps reverberates as she ascends the stairs of the basement.

Hushed whispers begin from the two of them, just soft enough that she can’t make out any words. They’re washed out by the ambient noise of the Tailteans as she opens the door, stepping back into that alley.

Something tells her that she’s gonna be here a lot more often then she thinks. 

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr @feyreofthewildfire  
also catch me lurking on both the felannie and sylvix servers cause i live in multi-shipping hell


End file.
